Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley, and we will be working together on this. I just want to point out that there was, of course, some mismanagement. As does the Senator, I want to fix some of the structural issues, but time is of the essence. I understand this is not happening today, but time is of the essence with regard to these pensions, especially for the mineworkers. Those for the teamsters are next and for the others in the Central States. As Chairman Grassley knows, it will get worse and worse and worse if we don't get this done this year. I do want to emphasize, while there of course is some mismanagement of funds here, the preponderance of the problem is that a bunch of mining companies, construction companies, and transportation companies went out of business with the Bush recession in 2007, 2008, and 2009, taking away the companies paying into these funds. The other part of it was Wall Street greed, generally what happened to the stock market. That is the preponderance of the problem, but I concur with Senator Grassley that we can work on a lot of this together. Senator Portman and I especially have a responsibility to get this done, to make it happen. I thank the chairman. I yield the floor. ____________________”